Can a Person be Both LGBT and Religious?

Description: Rizi Xavier Timane has a message for the world and for the LGBT community in particular, “God loves you just the way you are.”
For centuries, misguided individuals and entire societies have used religious texts to condemn and persecute minorities and anyone perceived as “different,” and as a transgendered minister and a person of color, Dr. Timane has experienced such discrimination and hatred firsthand. In An Uncommon Compromise: A Spiritual Guide for LGBT People of Faith, he shares the struggles he’s gone through since childhood to find his own identity and his place in the world—especially in his parents’ strict Christian religion.
“Many LGBT persons want to know God and have some form of spirituality but they have been discouraged by religious abuse. This is wrong, unfortunate and usually based on biblical misinterpretation. It is important for the LGBT community to know that there exists a spiritual path for them in which God loves ALL people regardless of gender or sexual identity,” says Timane.
What he’s found and what he shares in this book is that one person can change the world by telling people the truth about God’s unconditional love for us all. “It all begins with loving yourself just as you are. That is God’s way, and it can be, it must be ours as well,” Dr. Timane adds.